OMA's Maggie's Gartnavel wins 2012 Doolin prize

The RIAS (Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland) has announced OMA as the tenth recipient of the prestigious Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award for the firm’s “welcoming, light and spacious” design of Maggie’s Gartnavel in Glasgow. Serving as an exemplar for alternative healthcare design, OMA’s single story composition for the cancer care center laces together a series of interlocking rectangular spaces that form around a lush courtyard. Transparent walls of the building’s light-filled interior promenade connect patients directly to nature, as the building accommodates for the complex needs of the facility by providing spaces of interaction, personal privacy, and discrete counseling rooms, along with private nooks and corners. A notable characteristic of Maggie’s Gartnavel is the rich use of materials, from the flush inlaid timber and concrete ceiling to the simplistic concrete exterior and expansive floor-to-ceiling glass walls. OMA generously donated their £25,000 prize to the Maggie’s Cancer Care Center. More images after the break…

OMA partner-in-charge Ellen van Loon commented: “The Maggie’s Centre in Gartnavel is a special project for OMA; it is very different to the types of buildings that we usually design. I sincerely thank the RIAS for this significant recognition.”

The award, originally named the RIAS Doolan Award for Architecture, was renamed the RIAS Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award in 2004 in memory of its founder and patron, the inspired architect /developer Andy Doolan, who died in April of that year. The award would not exist without his extraordinary generosity and vision. Architect: OMA Client: Maggie Keswick Jencks Cancer Caring Centres Trust Structural engineer: Sinclair Knight Merz Services engineer: KJ Tait engineers Landscape: Lily Jencks with Harrison Stevens Contractor: Dunne Contract value: Confidential Date of completion: October 2011